'This lacerating, exhilarating debut novel . . . manages to be both boisterous and bleak, life-enhancing and life-denying, familiar and yet wholly original. It feels essential. You will probably read nothing else like it this year.' --The Guardian 'A brilliant portrait of female friendship, nearly the equal in honesty and subtlety to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels.' --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) An exuberant and ribald debut novel about three adolescent girls, as sweetly vulnerable as they are cunning and tough, coming of age in a gritty postindustrial town in nineties Yorkshire, England 'Ask anyone non-Northern, they'll only know Donny as punchline of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.' But Doncaster's also the home of Rach, Shaz, and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. Never mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz's bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin
